Compare and contrast TUSC policies with other Lewisham candidates

A fortnight ago, I was pleased to be invited to speak at the Lewisham Pensioners' Forum hustings on behalf of TUSC. Candidates were asked to submit brief written answers to some of the questions that there had not been time to debate. The Forum has kindly compiled the responses it received - copied below - or downloadable via this link

Compare and contrast the responses between TUSC and the Labour Party, for example on TTIP, and you'll find the sharp contrast that was evident at the hustings over, for example, whether or not to keep wasting billions on Trident!

When it came to the News Shopper request for information from the Lewisham West and Penge candidates, Jim Dowd from New Labour was apparently the only candidate not to reply. You can read the full responses here but this is what I had to say:

MARTIN POWELL-DAVIES (TRADE UNIONIST AND SOCIALIST COALITION)
 
Age? 51 

Where do you live? Sydenham 

Where are you from originally? Ashtead, Surrey.

Why do you want to represent this constituency? To be an MP who will speak up for the majority of people in Lewisham West and Penge who no longer feel represented by the establishment parties that offer only austerity and inequality; to campaign for a £10 an hour minimum wage, genuinely affordable homes and a properly-funded NHS, schools and council services. 

What local policy are you most passionate about? To stop unaccountable, divisive academies and to bring all schools back into democratic local authorities, so they can work together to meet every child’s needs. I have been one of the main organisers of the ‘Stop Academies in Lewisham’ campaign, mobilising parents, students and staff to oppose the academisation of schools like Sedgehill and Prendergast.

Describe yourself in 3 words: Dedicated, caring, socialist.

Who is your biggest hero? A local hero - Eleanor Marx, feminist and trade union organiser who helped to build the workers’ movement in London and internationally. 

What is your proudest moment? Helping, as organiser of the Penge Anti Poll Tax Union, to build a mass campaign that defied an unjust law and showed that a determined national struggle can defeat even a PM like Margaret Thatcher. 

... and finally, here's the interview I gave for the Great British Tuk Tuk Pop-Up Poll:  

Martin will be speaking at the '38 degrees' hustings on Thursday

Want to hear from TUSC? Well there's lots of opportunties tomorrow, Thursday April 30th!

Martin will be taking part in the one remaining hustings that's still going ahead in the Lewisham West and Penge constituency  - at the Honor Oak Tavern, SE23 1RH at 7pm:

 
Our campaign meeting for Penge will still be going ahead on Thursday night too - at the Crooked Billet pub, 99 High Street, Penge, SE20 7DT, 7.30 pm
 
TUSC will also send representatives to the 'Mummy's Gin Fund' hustings and a debate to be held in Goldsmiths tomorrow night as well.

Martin speaking in Bromley last night

Labour’s housing policy papers over cracks but doesn’t solve crisis

This week the housing crisis finally reached Westminster.

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates have been calling for rent control and investment in building and refurbishing quality council homes for years.

Now Labour, perhaps at last sensing the public outcry over the housing crisis, are making eleventh-hour attempts to appeal to private tenants by saying they would cap the rate of rent increases. Who wouldn’t welcome even this small concession? But it falls far short of what’s needed to solve the desperate and snowballing crisis. 

TUSC calls for rent control which does what it says on the tin - controls the level of rent. The Labour proposal simply covers the rate at which rents increase within a three-year period.

For most of the 20th century there was rent control in the UK. Until the Thatcher government abolished rent control in 1988, you could take your landlord to a ‘Rent Tribunal’ and have your rent reduced. Tenancies created before 1989 still have this right. Rent Tribunals still operate for them and the legislation is still effective. This means that it would be relatively easy for a new government to extend the reach of tribunals as an emergency measure.

Labour also proposes to introduce three-year tenancies. That will look like an improvement for tenants living in fear of eviction on six month tenancies but before 1988 there were secure tenancies in the private rented sector.

Around 19% (4.4 million) of UK households now live in private rented accommodation – and this figure is rising. They have to try to build their lives in insecure expensive accommodation. TUSC calls for secure tenancies.

It is sometimes argued that rent control ‘distorts the market’. Tenants wanting an affordable home are right to think the current market is distorted but at the same time buy-to-let landlords have a licence to print money – getting returns of up to 1400% since 1996.

There is much talk about the need for cuts to balance the books but almost 40% of the annual £25bn housing benefit bill goes to private landlords. Currently the private rented sector is heavily subsidised to provide insecure accommodation at unaffordable prices.

"These so-called second-generation rent controls are likely to mean that landlords set the rent for three year tenancies at a level that they would have expected the rents to rise over that period. And, indeed, they may also factor in the risk that rents might rise faster than they expect so could add a little on top of that amount as a precaution .... Most housing market experts see high rental costs as the market’s way of screaming that there is simply not enough supply in the right areas to cope with demand." See: http://www.businessinsider.co.id/labours-rent-cap-idea-sums-up-the-poverty-of-expectations-for-young-people-in-britain-2015-4/#.VT6vG5M9Crg

It is true that rent control will not ‘solve’ the housing crisis, for that we need to build more homes.
 
Labour's ‘target’ is to build 200,000 a year by the last year of a new government. But it is estimated we need 250,000 homes per year just to keep pace with new households – let alone deal with the backlog. So even if their target was achieved, the shortage would still be getting worse. But they don’t propose to reverse the cuts to social housing grant or local authority budgets. Without doing that, even their inadequate target is likely to prove a pipe dream. To really address the crisis we need to break with austerity.

TUSC wants to see investment in a mass programme of council housing building and refurbishment. There is money out there – the Rich List proves that. There is no shortage of cash, it’s just the question of who controls it. When the banks crashed the economy, the Bank of England found £375bn "down the back of the sofa” to bail them out. Let’s bail out all those who need decent homes, and a lot of those unemployed construction workers too!

Education - the priorities for the next Government

Tonight, Lewisham NUT hosted a debate between Labour, Green and TUSC candidates on 'Education - the priorities for the next Government'. Here's a summary of the points I made:

TUSC is trying to build a new party so that trade unions don’t just have to make do with lobbying other parties to support union policies but gives us a way to secure our own elected representatives supporting those demands - and supporting trade union struggles to win them outside Parliament and Local Councils too. Our candidates include prominent trade unionists, including three of us who are members of the NUT National Executive.

The NUT's seven education pledges

So, for TUSC, the education priorities for the next Government are clear: they are the same as the priorities of the NUT, set out in the Union’s Manifesto, endorsed by TUSC, and their seven 'stand up for education pledges'.

(1) Tackle the teacher workload crisis

The statistics are stark: 50,000 teachers have resigned in a year, perhaps as many as 40% of newly-qualified staff.

Unless you're in the job, it's hard to explain the unbearable intensity of workload, added to by the bullying regime of Ofsted, league tables and performance-related pay. TUSC says they all have to go.

TUSC believes that a key priority for a new Government is to immediately open up genuine negotiations for a National Contract that applies to all schools, including academies, putting a binding limit on working hours and increasing PPA so that teachers have the time to mark and prepare.

(2) Protect education spending in real terms

In fact, TUSC would go further than the NUT's demand and say that we need to increase spending in order to be able to recruit more teachers – and that means:

(3) Ensure qualified teachers in every classroom – to meet children’s needs and to share out the workload burden.

However, whichever of the main parties wins – and whatever Coalition they cobble together – the outcome will be more cuts, including in education.

You don't have to take my word for it. This is what the budget experts, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, have worked out from the spending plans of the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. The IFS predict budgets will be cut by at least 7% per child by 2020. That could mean 20,000 full-time teachers losing their jobs!

Sadly, it's no real surprise. After all, when George Osborne's plans for £30 billion more cuts were put to Parliament in January, 515 MPs voted for them, just 18 against!

TUSC is not prepared to accept austerity – we believe there’s plenty of money, just in wrong hands. The Sunday Times rich-list yesterday revealed that the wealthiest 1000 in the UK are now 'worth' £547BN (not counting what's in their bank accounts!) – that's up £28BN in a year. TUSC says we should use the wealth of that 1% to meet the needs of the 99%.

(4) Run education for children, not for profit

Unfortunately, we live in society where education is no longer seen by big business as a necessity to develop the next generation. Instead, it has become just another way to make money. Last Friday saw worldwide protest against Pearson, a company making over $7 billion a year from education. 

(5) Provide a broad curriculum, rather than narrow tests

These edu-businesses are behind the drive for standardisation, testing and tables so as to compare, ‘fail’ and privatise our schools. The main parties even back the introduction of 'baseline assessment' for four year-olds. TUSC, like NUT, will strongly oppose them. We want schools to develop interest, creativity and enjoyment not inflict mental stress and fear of failure.

TUSC is also completely opposed to academies and free schools. Academisation was always a mechanism to open up schools to education businesses and, at same time, remove democratic accountability over local education. TUSC would add an extra priority, calling for the: 

* Return of all academies back into democratic Local Authorities where parents, staff and local communities also have their own elected representatives to decide local education policy. That, of course, also means:

(6) Reinstate councils' powers to open new schools

Last but by no means least, we know that however well we teach, however many hours we put in, the conditions in which our children are brought up remain the key factor behind educational outcomes. 

(7) Take urgent steps to eradicate child poverty.
 
This Government has left a million more children in poverty, It has left London as one of most unequal cities on planet. Children who are living in sub-standard rented accommodation or without a home at all, or where parent(s) are working long hours for inadequate pay, have a struggle to live, let along learn and pass their exams.

That needs to be recognised by our politicians, instead of unfairly blaming schools like Sedgehill, a school with one of the most unbalanced pupil intakes in Lewisham.

To end child poverty, TUSC’s central demands are key: 

* For a £10 minimum wage now – not by 2020 or beyond
* For rent controls and a massive programme of renovation and house building

Those are TUSC’s priorities. Trade unionists need a political voice that will stand up for them – for better education, for a better NHS, against austerity and against attacks on trade unions and trade union members. Every vote for TUSC helps build that voice – please vote for us on May 7.

Press freedom must be more than the freedom for the wealthy to express their opinions

One of the many different issues that General Election candidates are being questioned about is the issue of 'press freedom'. Here is my reply to the emails that I have received:

Thank you for getting in touch to publicise to Election candidates your concerns about the lack of real press freedom in Britain and the undue influence that press barons like Rupert Murdoch can exert.

I completely share your concerns. The 2015 World Press Freedom Index put the UK only in 34th place. The ‘Murdochgate’ scandal helped to expose the close links between David Cameron and News of the World editors but also between Tony Blair and Murdoch too. Just recently, Richard Desmond announced he was donating £1m to UKIP, a Party that likes to pretend it isn’t part of that establishment.

These links are designed to bind together the political parties with the interests of the wealthy super-rich. Their ranks have swelled by another 13 billionaires in the last year according to the latest Sunday Times rich-list – and they say ‘we’re all in it together’!

Of course, it is made very clear to those Party leaders that if they speak out against those big business interests, they can expect to be silenced or attacked in the press. TUSC, as a Party campaigning against the austerity policies of big business and their establishment parties, is itself a victim of the lack of genuine media freedom. With 135 candidates standing in the General Election, well over the legal threshold for ‘fair coverage’, we have been largely excluded from much of the media, opinion poll forecasts and, of course, the leadership debates.

Despite this, our 280 seconds of Party Political Broadcast, backed up by the campaigning we are doing in towns and cities across Britain, has already helped to break down the barriers put up to hide our alternative voice from voters. Our policies for decent homes, wages and services chime with people’s views and mean our support is growing all the time.

The pledge in our broadcast from TUSC candidates, including Dave Nellist and myself, to be a ‘workers’ MP on a worker’s wage’ also wins support. It is a policy that hopefully reassures voters that TUSC’s elected representatives will remain committed to the people that backed them, rather than being persuaded otherwise by the press barons.

TUSC would certainly support tighter rules on media ownership and legislation to support, at the very least, the full implementation of the Leveson report. However, I believe the fundamental problem is not one of poor regulation, but that the media is almost entirely owned by big business individuals and conglomerates. As a journalist once put it in a letter to Der Spiegel, ‘Press freedom is the freedom of 200 rich people to express their opinion’.

A genuinely free press requires substantial media resources to be made available for genuine public use, under public ownership, control and accountability. I would support all political parties and trends being granted access to the media, perhaps in proportion to their support in the population as shown in elections. Then we would start to have a media that can provide accurate information and quality investigative journalism, one that can be accessed by minority points of view not just those of the establishment political parties.

TUSC - not just supporting but leading campaigns

TUSC is different from other parties. We are, as the BBC put it, the only '100% anti-austerity party' - but that's not all. Our candidates are different from most of our opponents too.

Marching through Ladywell today

As a Coalition bringing together experienced and determined trade unionists, socialists and community campaigners, we aren't just people who appear at Election time. TUSC candidates have been battling to defend their communities and fellow trade union members long before the Election - and we will be doing so long after the Election is over as well.

To see a full list of TUSC's 130-plus General Election candidates, see http://tusc2015.com/tuscs-general-election-challenge/. In London alone, we are standing in a third of the General Election seats. Our candidates include prominent trade unionists and a number of former Labour councillors now standing for TUSC against cuts.

For example, I am one of four NUT National Executive members standing nationally, in a personal capacity, for TUSC on May 7. TUSC has endorsed the NUT's Education Manifesto and agrees that the best way to plan local education is if every school is part of a democratic Local Education Authority. TUSC calls for the law to be changed so we can bring academies back into local authority provision. We also believe that parents and staff should be represented in decision-making alongside local councillors. None of the main parties are prepared to support those demands. 

Their future, their education

As a local parent and NUT Secretary in Lewisham, I have been playing a leading role in the 'Stop Academies in Lewisham' campaign, particularly opposing the threats to Sedgehill and the Prendergast Federation schools. If these schools are converted into academies, then there is a real danger that others would follow, tearing apart Lewisham Education, just as we have seen happen in Bromley.

Unlike the main parties, more and more parents now understand that academies are not the right way forward for education. That was shown again in today's lively march of parents, staff and students in Lewisham. We were united in opposition to the Governing Board's plans to turn the three Prendergast schools into academies.

As I explained to the closing rally, held outside Prendergast Vale school, we are all listening to politicians making promises up to May 7. Voters can decide if any of them are to be believed. Prendergast governors are also making promises about the benefits of academisation - but are they any more believable? We think not. 

At the closing rally this afternoon

Of course, at the General Election at least we have a vote. Scandalously, under the existing academy legislation, parents and staff don't have that right. That's why we have no choice but to step up the campaign to make sure that our voices cannot be ignored, including through further strike action before the 'consultation' ends on June 8th. 

I hope today's march will boost the confidence of all those who took part to go out and win our campaign to 'Stop Academies In Lewisham'. I also hope that everyone who wants to defend education from the education cuts and attacks that are to come, whichever of the main parties wins on May 7, will use their vote to back TUSC instead!

See a video of today's protest here:

 

Gogglebox debates TUSC and a "Workers' MP on a Worker's Wage"

The biased official polling organisations still won't even allow people to have the option of giving their support to TUSC - but tonight's Gogglebox did on Channel 4!

Sandra and Sandy were definitely impressed!

Like thousands of others who watched TUSC's Party Political Broadcast when it was first shown, voters learned that there was a Party standing up to austerity that they hadn't been told about before, learned that Nigel Farage was not the 'man of the people' that he claims to be, and that Dave Nellist had sat in Parliament as a Labour MP on a worker's wage.

As a TUSC candidate in Lewisham West and Penge, I've also made the same pledge, committing if elected to continue to take only my classroom teacher's pay and using the rest of my MP's salary to support trade union, community and anti-austerity campaigns.

Some of the Gogglebox participants didn't seem convinced that Dave could really have done it - but he did, along with other MPs like Pat Wall and Terry Fields as well. To find out more, read a BBC news article that explains how Dave "would only accept the average wage of a skilled factory worker in Coventry, which amounted to 46% of his salary as an MP. Each year the remaining 54% was donated to charitable and political causes".